Latest / The Catholic Current / Have You Met the Fathers? (Steve Ray) 6/18/26

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Have You Met the Fathers? (Steve Ray) 6/18/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Metaig.
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The wisdom of St. Augustine, if one can dare attempt to summarize Augustine, is to say
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we're not making any progress on any front until there's conversion to Christ first.
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Is that a fair summary?
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It's funny, now that you say that, I feel like half the great heresies in the Western
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tradition have been from people trying to summarize St. Augustine.
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Isn't that true?
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I did hear a thin ice crackling underneath my feet, so I'm stepping back.
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Praised be Jesus Christ, this is Father Robert Metaig of the Society of Jesus, your daily
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host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us from the station of La Crosse Studios, your local radio station,
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the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
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As always, let's start with prayer.
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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, through the intercession of
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St. Ignatius of Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of
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discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
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Well friends, I want to talk a little bit about church and history and some great figures
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who deserve to be better known.
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The church has a very great heritage and a treasury in the church fathers.
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I think they are our unsung heroes, and I think some of the brightest jewels that need
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to be better known are what are known as the apostolic fathers.
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Those who were disciples of the apostles themselves, they wrote and they taught and they served
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as bishops.
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Many of them were martyred.
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There's a treasury here that needs to be rediscovered.
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So how are we going to do that?
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We're going to turn to a great friend of the show.
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He's a convert, apologist, author, and an expert Holy Land tour guide, Steve Ray.
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Welcome back to the Catholic Current.
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Well, thank you, Father McTigge.
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It's always lovely to talk with you.
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I love having an intelligent interviewer.
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Well, good.
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You know, every now and again I'm interviewed too, and what a difference a good interviewer
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makes.
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At the risk of putting myself in good company, I want to talk about the fathers of the church,
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and in particular the apostolic fathers.
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You've done a lot of work on them recently.
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You've even made a documentary about it, because you went to where they were.
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I can give you all sorts of scholarly reasons as to why the apostolic fathers are so important,
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but why did you go to where they were?
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Well, I consider these guys, they're not boring old guys buried away in dusty books somewhere.
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These were really heroic men, and this period of time I like to call it the black hole of
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Christian history.
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It's a part of history that people know very little about.
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I heard you talking in the introduction about Augustine, and that's kind of where church
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history starts for most people, but these guys were the first generation, and that's
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why they're called apostolic fathers.
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Church fathers cover eight centuries from the very beginning until around 800.
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Those are the church fathers.
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That's a big title, and there's a lot of guys under that umbrella.
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These guys are also church fathers, but they're a very exclusive group called apostolic fathers
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because some of them knew the apostles, or they were the next generation and knew people
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who knew the apostles.
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So it's just kind of like the black hole.
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Everybody knows these guys, and they're very exciting.
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In fact, I'll just say this.
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This was one of the reasons, main reasons I'm a Catholic today because of these men.
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If I could have proved that they were not Catholic, I would have found the missing link
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in the chain, and I would not have had to become Catholic.
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When I went back and I read them, they were Catholic.
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There's no missing links from Jesus till today.
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These guys were the hinge figures, so to speak, and we invited them all into our living room
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one time.
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This sounds funny, but my wife and I, we decided I wanted to interview them, so we invited
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them all into our living room for about a month through their books, and we read their
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books, and we talked to them, and it was this marvelous Q&A session.
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We asked them 1,000 questions, and they gave us 1,000 answers, and we said at the end,
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you know what?
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We have to become Catholic.
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Well, you know, I think of St. Cardinal Newman who had said that to be steeped in history
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is to cease to be Protestant.
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I saw a meme, and I thought about it the other day, and I said, I have to bring this
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up to Steve, because Steve will appreciate it.
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It shows a guy in a toga burying a book, and it says in the year 313, Pastor Billy, hunted
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by Emperor Constantine and the Pope, buries his copy of the King James Version of the
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Bible.
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So anything from the Gospel to Martin Luther was just this medieval invention that came
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out of absolutely nowhere, and the Fathers are really that bridge between us and our
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here and now, and the time of our Lord and the Gospels and the Apostles.
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So in this segment, talk a little bit about the countries that you went to and what that
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meant to you.
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Well, we filmed this in five countries.
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We followed, let me give you first the five that we did.
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We first, we did Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, which became a Pope, Polycarp of
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Smyrna, and people think that means many fish, polycarps, but carp means fruit.
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His parents were obviously Christians, and they expected him to bear much fruit.
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Irenaeus of Lyon and Justin Martyr, and by the way, his last name is not Martyr, you
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could say Justin the Martyr.
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Those are the five that we covered.
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And in order to tell their story, we went to all the places where they were born and
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all the places that they died as martyrs and the events in between.
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So we had to film this in Israel, of course, and Samaria, that's what many call the West
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Bank, is Samaria because Justin Martyr was born in Neapolis, which is today Nablus, which
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is right in the middle of that.
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We had to go to Italy, of course.
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I was arrested by two Roman soldiers while we were there.
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You know those guys that are around the Colosseum dressed up?
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Sure, yeah.
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I paid them to arrest me, and I pretended I was Justin Martyr preaching, and they grabbed
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me and threw me on the ground and arrested me.
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It was a pretty cool scene, actually.
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Oh, wow.
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So we did a lot in Italy with the apostolic fathers and Turkey and France.
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Turkey is interesting because people don't realize the biblical sites in Turkey.
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I always say that if Christianity was born in Israel, it grew up in Turkey.
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The first, I think it was 10 or 12 ecumenical councils took place in Turkey of today.
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This is an incredible site, and so we went there because this is even Antioch.
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We talk about Antioch where we were first called Christians in Acts 11, 26.
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That was in Turkey of today.
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That's where you have to go to see that place today.
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So Turkey is an amazing place.
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So it's Israel, Samaria, Italy, Turkey, and France, and we covered all of their lives
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and all of their martyrdoms.
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I think that that's so important.
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We think of historical figures as either plaster statues or just stacks of dusty paper,
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but they were real people.
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They lived in real places.
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They had their times, and they all died pretty horribly, didn't they?
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Yes, they did.
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They had horrible deaths.
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I mean, Ignatius of Antioch was eaten by lions, ripped to pieces, all that was left were the
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few bones.
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Polycarp was burned at the stake, and eventually they just stabbed him with a knife and killed
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him.
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Yeah, they had some very rough times.
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It was bad to be alive in those times and be Christians, but they're so significant
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because I call them, they're our hall of fame.
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We have a baseball hall of fame, football hall of fame, and even when I talk about them,
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I have them take me out to the ballgame, music playing in the background while I'm explaining
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it.
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These are our hall.
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This is our hall of fame, and this is the community of saints.
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Like in Cooperstown, you have the baseball bats, and the mitts, and the hats, and everything.
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Well, we have relics of our heroes too, our hall of fame.
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The way I started the movie, Father, I think it was kind of clever.
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We have like it's a wall with these guys' pictures on them, and I'm walking through
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our hall of fame, and I'm introducing, now here's a picture of Ignatius of Antioch.
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And I explain real briefly each one of those, and then I have a time machine, and we have
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this smoke thing, and it goes, kachoo, kachoo, kachoo, and the smoke was pouring out, and
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I disappear, and then I reappear in Antioch, where we start the life of Ignatius of Antioch.
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So it's a very fun movie.
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And here's another thing about it being, I say they're the hinge figures because had
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they not done what they did and be willing to die as martyrs, that generation of people,
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not just the apostolic fathers, but all of them, we probably wouldn't be here today.
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They're the ones that took the message of Jesus and the apostles.
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They took it through the horrendous years of persecution, and they brought it out on
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the other side before there was ever a New Testament.
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They survived on the apostolic tradition.
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Here's I'm gonna read two verses from Paul to show five generations before there was
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a Bible, like you said.
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This is how the message got out through these men.
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So Paul said, I delivered to you what I also received.
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Okay, so there, he received it.
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Somebody else taught him, that's two generations.
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And what you have heard from me, ah, he told other people, that's three.
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And you entrusted to faithful men so that they're able to teach others also.
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That's five generations there, Paul says.
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I delivered to you what I have received, and what you have heard from me in the presence
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of witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
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That's how these guys communicated the gospel and the life of the church.
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And today when a bishop gets to the point of death.
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Steve, I'm gonna jump in because we got about 10 seconds left in this segment.
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But I like that idea of the thread of continuity, that there is a deposit of faith that we receive
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with gratitude that is handed to us by the blood-soaked hands of the martyrs.
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Friends, we can back and continue our conversation with Steve Ray.
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We're talking about meeting the church fathers, in particular the apostolic fathers today.
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
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My returning guest today is evangelist, apologist, and tour guide and author, Steve Ray.
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We're talking about the Church Fathers, in particular, the Apostolic Fathers.
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Steve, at the end of the last segment, you were quoting Paul, who already was talking
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about the faith being handed on intact across five generations.
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And this is well before the New Testament is written and recognized as such, which is
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another blow to the whole sola scriptura illusion.
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Tell us about what's involved in the handing on of the faith, and why the Apostolic Fathers
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are pivotal figures.
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I think the phrase you use is hinge figures.
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Yeah, those are the hinge figures.
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If they hadn't done what they did and suffered the way they did and stayed true to the cause,
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we wouldn't be here today because the faith would have died out.
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But these early Christians turned the world upside down for Jesus Christ in a pagan Greco-Roman
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empire.
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They turned it upside down for Jesus Christ in only 300 years, and shortly after that,
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it became the religion of the empire.
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How did they do that?
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Because they really, really, really believed it, enough to live it, and even enough to
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die for it.
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And in my movie, it's called the Apostolic Fathers' Handing on the Faith.
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That word in the Greek New Testament is paradosis.
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Paul says, hold fast to the traditions, paradosis, that I handed on to you.
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Hold fast to those.
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He didn't say, read my book.
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He said, hold fast to these traditions, whether written or in word of mouth.
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And in my movie, what I do is I say, where did we get the Bible?
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And while I'm saying that, a Bible falls out of the air, poof, and hits the ground.
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And I said, wow, the Bible just fell out of the sky.
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And I said, no, it didn't.
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I said, this was a process that took 400 years.
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And how did these men know?
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How did this generation, four centuries, how did they know what to do, how to get baptized,
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what to do on Sunday morning without the book?
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And I say, when Jesus went up on the Mount of Olives, and when we're there, I love to
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do this.
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When I'm on the Mount of Olives, I'll be there again in November and December.
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And I say, the last thing the disciples saw when Jesus ascended was the bottom of his
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dirty feet.
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But he did not turn back around and say, oh, guys, before I leave, I forgot, don't forget
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to read my book.
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There was no book.
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He didn't leave a book.
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Nobody even dreamed at that time that there was going to be 27 written documents that
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would be equal to Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
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Who would have dreamed at that time that you would have books written by somebody else
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that would be equally inspired and infallible as those?
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So what Jesus did leave behind is 12 men.
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That's what he left behind.
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One of them had the keys of the kingdom.
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They went out and taught and practiced what Jesus had taught them.
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That became the apostolic tradition.
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That is what they people lived on.
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And then afterwards, some of them got written down, and after 400 years, they were collected
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into a book of 27.
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Well, this is totally backwards to what I used to believe as a Baptist.
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I really kind of thought the Bible did fall from the sky.
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Right.
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Yeah, and the beginning was the book.
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So there is a handing on.
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There is a teaching, a way of living, a way of praying, a way of worshiping, and a way
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of fellowship and morality as well.
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So one of the things that I saw in the materials that you'd sent me, and I know it's on your
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website, you have kind of a timeline of how closely associated the apostolic fathers were
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to the apostles and to our Lord.
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So let's go right to the earliest father.
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So you've got the Apostle John, the beloved disciple, and he mentors Polycarp, and then
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Peter mentors Clement, and Paul mentors Ignatius of Antioch.
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Tell us about the historical significance of that proximity to our Lord.
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Okay.
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This is, by the way, that timeline, we created it for our movie, but it's on my website,
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and I don't know when this will air, but if you go to catholicconvert.com, it's on
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my blog.
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You may have to scroll down a little bit to find it or go to resources, and it's there
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for free to print out, anybody can.
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But I like to say that, in a way, Irenaeus, who recently became a doctor of the church,
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is the great grandson of Jesus, spiritually speaking.
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So Jesus teaches the 12, and then here I just have three of the important apostles.
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I've got Peter, Paul, and John.
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Now, Peter and John knew Jesus.
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They were with him for three years.
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Then Ignatius, he knew John, and he probably knew Paul, because Paul went up to Antioch,
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and Ignatius was the bishop there.
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So you've got these guys, their lives overlapped.
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Clement sat and talked to Paul, and Peter.
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He's probably a convert of Peter.
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Ignatius knew John.
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So here's, I'm gonna read this one paragraph.
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I don't normally read something like this, but this is Irenaeus.
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He was born around 120, died around 200.
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No New Testament yet.
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How does he know what the truth is?
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He learned it from Polycarp, who learned it from John, who learned it from Jesus.
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And here's what Irenaeus wrote.
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I can describe the place where the blessed Polycarp sat and talked, his daily schedule,
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the character of his life, his personal appearance, his homilies to crowded congregations.
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I remember how he spoke of his friendship with John the Apostle, and with the others
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who had seen the Lord.
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He repeated their words from memory, telling things he'd heard them say about the Lord,
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his miracles and his teaching, things that Polycarp had heard direct from the eyewitness
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of the word of life.
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So here's Irenaeus, who listened to Polycarp.
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Polycarp was friends of John.
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John laid his hands on Polycarp to anoint him as bishop.
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So you've got this connection.
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Now for me, my problem was, Father, was I had Bible alone.
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And I cared a lot about what my pastor said today.
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But I didn't ever stop to think and go back and ask what the very first pastors had to
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say who knew the apostles.
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This is what just rattled my whole world.
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This is what actually brought me into the faith.
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So these guys are all interlinked with each other.
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That was the way the message got out.
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They were not innovators.
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They were not trying to create something new.
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They were being very careful to be loyal to exactly what the apostolic teaching was.
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I think that's hugely important.
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Last summer, I went out to New Jersey to visit with my Uncle Willie, who had just turned
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90, as my mother's last remaining brother.
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He just had access to the stories because he was there.
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He saw it.
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As a young man or as a kid growing up, my grandparents and the way they did Thanksgiving
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and Christmas and so on.
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But he also had decades of living it and handing it on to his children and then to his grandchildren.
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I since went to God just a few months ago, a very good Catholic dad, thanks be to God.
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But my promise, I'm really glad that I was able to have that eyewitness testimony coupled
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with decades of reflection.
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Aren't the apostolic fathers close to that experience for us?
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That's exactly what they are.
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They were there.
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They saw it.
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They're telling the family story.
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They carried it into the next generation.
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That's what Paul said.
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I received it from the apostles.
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I'm now sharing it with you so you can share it with others.
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The important thing was, is these guys knew that this was the deposit of faith.
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They were not allowed to mess with it.
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This is the way I did it in the movie.
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I rented one of those armored trucks from the bank.
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I even had a guy in the uniform with his gun escorting me.
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I got out of the truck and I had two big bags of money.
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I am like the apostles.
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I have the deposit of faith and I'm now going into the bank to deposit this deposit of faith
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into the bank.
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That's what the apostles did.
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Now, the money's in the bank.
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That deposit of doctrinal deposit is in the bank.
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Now what?
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That has to be protected.
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It has to be disseminated.
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It has to be explained.
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This is what the deposit of faith is.
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I gave a talk one time, Father, where I went up on the stage and I had a big yellow box
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with red crosses on it.
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And I said, this is the deposit of faith.
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This represents it.
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The apostles left this and when the last apostle died, the public revelation ceased.
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It's all in this box.
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It has to be developed over time and understood because it's complicated, all of it, but that's
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it.
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And the bishops are supposed to protect it, to explain and expound it.
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And they're not allowed, when they become a bishop, they have to pledge they will never
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add anything to that box and they won't take anything out of that box.
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That's not their deposit of faith to mess with.
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That's our deposit of faith given to the whole church.
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And if any bishop decides to reach in that box and start messing around with that deposit
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of faith that was given to us, I'm not happy about it because that's not his deposit to
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mess with.
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That deposit is given into the bank and they are only there to manage it and to protect
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it, not to add or take away from it.
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So this is how I explain what the apostolic fathers did.
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They received this deposit.
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They were the ones who held it in their hands and with the apostles, they are now in charge
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of disseminating it, teaching it, explaining it, protecting it, making sure nothing is
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added or taken away from it.
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And over time, we develop it and explain it deeper.
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I use the example of a red cabbage.
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When you get the red cabbage, there's a lot there.
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You start over the centuries peeling away the layers of the cabbage and you see newer
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and newer things.
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It's not a new deposit of faith.
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It's not a new doctrine.
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It's only unpacking and explaining what that red cabbage that we were given originally.
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And we understand it deeper and deeper over the centuries through the apostolic fathers
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and the other bishops that follow them.
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See, I think that's tremendously important, especially since we're told now that we've
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discovered a new way of being church and the magic word synodality, which is actually a
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noble word that I think has been hijacked.
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And maybe one of the things we can talk about in the next segment as we run out of time
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in this one is if someone says, well, the church used to believe and teach this, but
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now we teach and believe and do this other thing instead.
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That's a great big huge honking red flag.
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So we start with, as the church has always taught, and now we understand it more deeply,
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more profoundly, can explain it more lucidly.
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That's what a development of doctrine is.
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It's not alteration.
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Continuity is absolutely essential.
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And continuity is what the apostolic fathers went to their deaths for without hesitation.
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And so I have to have an examination of conscience.
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Maybe other people do, too.
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Do I know our Lord so well, his example and his teaching, that I can detect lies and liars
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and I know what's worth dying for and what's not?
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Friends, we come back.
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We're going to continue our conversation with Steve Ray.
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We're talking about the church fathers, in particular, the apostolic church fathers.
25:07
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I'm talking today with author and apologist Steve Ray.
26:59
We're talking about the Church Fathers, in particular, the Apostolic Fathers.
27:04
Steve, I'm always looking for memorable quotes to augment my prayer, to spice my preaching.
27:12
You spent a lot of time with the Apostolic Fathers.
27:15
What are some of the memorable quotes that you have from them?
27:17
Well, one of the ones that really rattled my cage as a Baptist was Ignatius of Antioch,
27:25
because here's a guy that is a first century.
27:27
He's a first century believer.
27:29
He died in 106, 107, eaten by lions in Rome, but he was an old man when he was eaten.
27:37
So he was a first century guy.
27:40
He lived during the time of the apostles and knew them.
27:43
And when somebody says at that time, a bishop who everybody in that whole part of the world
27:48
respected him, beware of the heretics who refuse to partake of the Eucharist because
27:56
they deny that it's the same body and blood of Jesus that hung on the cross.
28:02
That doesn't sound very Baptist to me.
28:04
It doesn't sound that way to me at all.
28:07
No, what he's saying is that the crucifix above the altar, the crucifixion of Christ
28:14
and the sacrament on the altar are one and the same sacrifice.
28:20
You can't separate the two.
28:21
What's on the altar is the same body and blood of that man who hung on the cross.
28:27
So when we're taking part of this, we're actually being transported back in a sense to the actual
28:33
crucifixion and be taking part in that.
28:36
He also said, assemble on the Lord's day and break bread and offer the Eucharist.
28:45
But first make confession for your faults so that your sacrifice may be a pure one.
28:52
Now, there's so much in that sense.
28:54
First we assemble on the Lord's day.
28:55
It's no longer on Saturday.
28:57
They understood by the apostles that the Lord's day we gather together now on Sunday, the
29:02
first day of the week, the day of the resurrection.
29:05
And you break bread, which is the Eucharist.
29:08
It's offering the Eucharist.
29:09
Offer means that's a sacrificial term, but first make confession of your faults.
29:16
What church in the world today makes it possible for you to confess your faults before you
29:22
celebrate the mass?
29:24
The Catholic church on Saturday at three o'clock, you can go and confess your faults so that
29:29
when you come to church on Sunday, your sacrifice, this is a sacrifice.
29:34
It's not just bread and grape juice.
29:36
This is a real sacrifice so that your sacrifice is a pure one, which takes you all the way
29:41
back to Malachi 1.11, that there's going to be the sacrifice and you want your sacrifice
29:46
to be pure.
29:47
So you go to confession Saturday before you go.
29:50
This is first century.
29:52
These guys didn't have a new Testament.
29:54
They're quoting and practicing.
29:57
Part of the apostolic tradition was not only what Peter, Andrew, James, and John and Paul
30:02
taught.
30:04
It was how they lived and their liturgy.
30:07
The apostolic tradition included their liturgy, what they did on Sunday morning, how they
30:14
broke bread and called it a sacrifice and the Eucharist.
30:18
All of that was wrapped up.
30:19
It wasn't just a book.
30:20
It wasn't just words on a page.
30:23
It was the life that they lived, the tradition that they passed on, how the family conducted
30:28
itself when they're together and when they're apart.
30:32
This is what that apostolic, and this is that line there, symbol on the Lord's Day
30:35
is classic, explaining not just what the book says, but what they actually did.
30:41
And it was clear that what they did on the Lord's Day wasn't just a happy meal and celebrating
30:47
us and all of our us-ness.
30:50
I also think, Steve, of those folks who try to tell us that Catholic practice is primarily
30:57
medieval accretions that need to be scraped away.
31:01
The apostolic fathers give the lie to that, don't they?
31:04
They do.
31:05
It is what the apostles taught and practiced, was it's eternal in a sense.
31:11
It is solid.
31:13
It is not to be changed or altered.
31:15
It is what God has given us to do and he gave us the format and the blueprint to do it.
31:22
And he doesn't say, well, you can change the blueprint down the road if you want to get
31:26
together a big synod.
31:28
Let's have a big synod together and we'll redo the blueprint here a little bit because
31:32
we don't like the way it is and we've got to kind of stay, keep up with the world a
31:36
little bit.
31:37
You know, this is the apostolic fathers show the lie to that.
31:42
They wouldn't tolerate that, yeah.
31:43
They wouldn't tolerate that sort of thing.
31:46
So the reality of the Eucharist and the realism of the Eucharist, not just a memorial meal,
31:56
but a true making present of the sacrifice of Calvary.
32:01
That's not something Aquinas came up with in the 13th century.
32:04
That's right from the get-go, isn't it?
32:06
It certainly is.
32:07
It's a development of it.
32:09
We do the, from the breaking of the bread.
32:13
That's what they called it back then.
32:14
But the four verbs that go along with it, both when Jesus multiplied loaves and fish,
32:20
when he instituted the Eucharist in the upper room, and when he spoke to the men on the
32:26
road to Emmaus, he uses four verbs.
32:28
And these became known, he took, he broke, he blessed, he gave.
32:34
That is the four actions of the Eucharist.
32:36
Even today, they take, they bless, they break, they give.
32:40
This is what they were supposed to do.
32:43
They don't change that.
32:44
We are not allowed to change it.
32:47
This is, Justin Martyr, you wanted a couple of quotes.
32:50
I love this quote right here from Justin Martyr.
32:53
This one is the first time that the Sunday liturgy was ever explained, in writing, anyway.
33:00
And he's writing to Marcus Aurelius, the emperor, who's persecuting them, and he says, why are
33:06
you persecuting us?
33:07
And they had misconceptions about what Christians did when they gathered together on Sunday,
33:13
because it was called the Mysteries, and they were secret, they didn't let other people
33:16
come in.
33:17
You had to be initiated through baptism and confirmation to get into this thing, what's
33:21
going on behind closed doors.
33:23
But Justin said, I'm gonna tell you what we're doing, so you don't have any misconceptions,
33:28
dear emperor.
33:30
On Sunday, we gather together in one place.
33:34
Now when I'm reading this, just think, what church has this same blueprint today?
33:39
We gather in one place, not 50 different denominations.
33:43
We gather together in one place, and the gospels and the prophets are read aloud.
33:49
Then the priest instructs us, that's the homily.
33:53
Then we all stand and pray together.
33:55
When our prayer is ended, we bring up the bread and the wine and water.
34:00
This is the gifts being brought up at the center of the mass.
34:03
Then the priest offers prayers and thanksgivings, and all the people say, amen.
34:09
The Eucharist is then distributed.
34:12
The deacons take the Eucharist to anyone absent.
34:15
Then a collection is taken for the poor and the needy.
34:18
That was written in 150 AD.
34:21
That is early, early.
34:23
That is from an apostolic father who knew, probably somebody who knew the apostles.
34:30
You don't think he did, but he came from the Holy Land, from Naples in Samaria.
34:36
He's writing this.
34:37
As a philosopher, by the way, he wore the philosopher's pallium.
34:41
That's what he did.
34:42
He studied all the philosophies, and they said to him, well, what are you now?
34:47
He said, I have studied all the philosophies, Plato and Aristotle.
34:51
I studied them all, and now I'm a Christian because I am convinced that Christianity is
34:56
the true philosophy.
34:58
By the way, bishops, archbishops, when they become archbishops, get a pallium.
35:03
This is where it came from.
35:04
These philosophers back then wore palliums that designated them as philosophers, and
35:13
that's where the palliums come from, archbishops.
35:16
But just think, this is 150 AD written to the emperor explaining what they do on Sunday
35:21
morning, and you couldn't get a better blueprint for what the Catholic mass is than that.
35:26
Wow.
35:27
That's absolutely, it's jaw-dropping.
35:31
The idea that he was corresponding with Marcus Aurelius, I mean, the church really has seen
35:39
it all, hasn't it?
35:40
You know, I'm amazed when I think, oh, we're going through this period of time, and the
35:45
church is struggling, dealing with, but it's gone through communism.
35:50
It's gone through the Nazis.
35:52
It's gone through the Roman Empire.
35:54
It's gone through every single thing.
35:56
And when people say, okay, the church is dead, we're gonna bury it, guess what?
36:00
The next day it raises again, and it's youthful, and there it is all over again.
36:04
The church has been dead and buried so many times, but it always comes back to life because
36:09
it's just like Jesus.
36:10
It dies and comes back to life.
36:12
One of my favorite scholars is Etienne Jolsona, so the church has a delightful habit of burying
36:19
its would-be pallbearers.
36:21
Do you have another quote handy?
36:23
I really enjoy unpacking these.
36:26
This is a fantastic one, too.
36:28
Make certain, therefore, that you all observe one common Eucharist.
36:33
Now imagine in a normal city today that you drive down Main Street, you have 10 churches,
36:38
you have the Methodist, the Presbyterian, the Baptist, they just go on and on.
36:44
Make certain, therefore, that you all observe one common Eucharist, for there is but one
36:50
body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there is but one cup of union with his blood, and one
36:56
single altar of sacrifice.
36:59
It's not just crackers and grape juice.
37:01
This is a real sacrifice.
37:04
Imagine as also there is but one bishop with his clergy.
37:09
Already in the first century, there's one bishop for a diocese, and his clergy, and
37:15
my own fellow deacons.
37:19
This will ensure that your doings are in full accord with the will of God.
37:23
There we're talking the bishop, priest, and deacon already established in the first century,
37:29
that it's one altar, it is a sacrifice, and you're all to be in one body together.
37:36
There's not a whole bunch of different bodies, and if you do what I just told you, you will
37:39
ensure that you are in full accord with the will of God.
37:43
But look to those men who have perverted notions about the grace that have come down to us.
37:49
See how contrary to the mind of God they are, and this is Ignatius of Antioch explaining
37:54
these things.
37:55
Wow, this is absolutely just so potent, and it's thrilling to see.
38:03
I know for myself, and we'll talk about more in the next segment of where to learn about
38:07
them more.
38:08
For me, part of my daily prayer, my preparation for preaching, is something called the Catena
38:13
Areia.
38:14
I'm sure you're familiar with it, Steve.
38:16
Thomas Aquinas went through every line of the gospel and found every quote from every
38:22
church father for each line of the gospel, and put them together as a reference.
38:27
Now, on my bookshelf, it's about practically a foot long, because it's several volumes,
38:32
but you can get it for 99 cents on Kindle.
38:37
Isn't it the case that we live in a golden age?
38:40
The access to the fathers is something we've never had before, and I just realized I've
38:45
asked you a big question.
38:46
We've only got a minute left in this segment.
38:48
Well, yeah, absolutely, that's the case.
38:50
It's an embarrassment of riches, because you can go on websites now that have the complete
38:55
set.
38:56
I have so many books on the fathers at church, but I have them also on a program I call,
39:01
it's called Verbum, where I have probably 600 volumes of the fathers of the church and
39:07
the early writings of the church, and you can search them by phrases.
39:12
You can compare them.
39:14
You can go to the Bible and say, where is this verse cited in the fathers, and it'll
39:19
take you through all of those volumes and show you where that passage of scripture is
39:23
cited by these guys.
39:24
Today, I would say that Augustine and Ambrose and Aquinas would be totally dumbfounded,
39:33
because they were still working with scrolls, rolling scrolls, trying to find where something
39:37
was.
39:38
They would be drooling over that, and I seem to remember Aquinas and a comrade were heading
39:44
back to Paris, and they were up on a hill, and they saw the magnificent view of Paris
39:48
and the cathedral and so on, and he said, well, he said, I would trade it all in for
39:54
Chrysostom's Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew if I could get my hands on it.
39:58
We do live in a golden era.
39:59
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Steve Ray.
40:03
We're talking about the church fathers and the apostolic fathers in particular.
40:07
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41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ.
41:21
This is Fr.
41:22
Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
41:25
we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
41:28
You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios, your local radio station
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and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
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Hey friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic analysis, help sustain this work at thestationofthecross.com.
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Here on The Catholic Current, we engage the issue seriously and faithfully, and that intellectual
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Support us please, thestationofthecross.com.
41:53
My returning guest is apologist, author evangelist Steve Ray, also expert tour guide of the Holy
41:59
Land.
42:00
We're talking about the Apostolic Fathers of the Church.
42:04
These were witnesses and they gave testimony in two ways.
42:07
The first, by the way they died, and also by what they wrote.
42:11
Let's do a quick review of how they died, what that meant, and then begin to talk about
42:15
where we can find what they wrote.
42:17
Okay, good.
42:18
I'll start with the first one, my favorite, Ignatius of Antioch, and we'll just have to
42:23
briefly give a quick summary, but he was the Bishop of Antioch, which was the whole Eastern
42:29
Church.
42:30
They knew, the Romans always felt that if you cut the head off the snake, the snake
42:35
will die.
42:36
They didn't realize that if you killed the Bishop, another one will take his place and
42:40
the people will continue to carry on, because this is a living thing you can't kill.
42:45
So they arrested him and they took him all the way from what is Syria of today, or in
42:50
that area, it was Syria then, now it's right by Lebanon.
42:54
And they took him in chains, said he was chained to Roman soldiers, all the way across the
42:59
Roman Empire.
43:00
He stopped at Smyrna, which is Izmir of today, and he met with Polycarp and they had a time
43:08
together.
43:09
Then they took him all the way across and he wrote seven letters on his way.
43:14
The one he wrote to Rome was very interesting because he acknowledges Rome's primacy over
43:20
the other churches.
43:21
He acknowledges their primacy of the Church of Rome.
43:24
And he also said, some of you are wealthy, they're going to feed me to the lions.
43:29
Some of you have influence that we're going to try and protect me from this death, but
43:34
I beg you not to do it because the teeth of the lions will grind me like wheat into the
43:41
precious bread of Christ.
43:43
That's a very Eucharistic illustration.
43:46
And so he begged them to do nothing to interfere with his martyrdom because he said, the lions
43:52
are my way to God.
43:54
So he's an old man and they take him all the way across and they do, they take him to the
43:58
Colosseum and they feed him to the lions.
44:02
And it said all that was left was some small fragments of bones.
44:05
The believers afterwards collected those bones, they wrapped them in purple cloth, which was
44:12
a sign of royalty, and they carried them all the way back to Antioch.
44:16
They are now residing in the Church of San Clemente in Rome, which is 300 yards from
44:23
the Colosseum where he died and that's where his bones are.
44:26
So the bones of Clement, as far as the successors of Peter, you have Peter, Linus, Cletus, Clement.
44:33
He's the third successor of Peter.
44:37
And it says that when just as John baptized in the Jordan, Peter baptized in the Tiber
44:45
River.
44:46
So the way I did it in my story is that Clement heard this strange voice with a funny accent.
44:52
It was a Nazareth from Galilee and he listens and he hears the story and Clement is baptized
44:59
in the Tiber River by Peter and ends up being the third successor of Peter as the Pope.
45:05
And he writes a letter in 96 AD.
45:09
This is the first century.
45:11
John the Apostle is still alive in Ephesus and they write to him because he's the Bishop
45:18
of Rome, the Corinthian Church.
45:20
We have more problems.
45:22
Even when Paul was here, we had more problems.
45:24
Please help us, Clement of Rome, since you're the head of the church.
45:28
This is still first century.
45:30
And he writes back to them as one having authority.
45:33
He said, the Holy Spirit and us say to you, this is papal writing.
45:40
And so they took him up to the Black Sea and they drowned him.
45:44
You always see him with an anchor and they tied him to an anchor and they threw him into
45:48
the Dead Sea.
45:50
And later on, through a miracle, they recovered his bones and brought them back there.
45:54
Also with the bones of St. Ignatius of Antioch in the church of San Clemente Clement.
45:59
That's the name of the Pope, San Clemente, St. Clement.
46:03
Justin Martyr, he was the philosopher who ended up believing in Christ and he started
46:08
a school in Rome and they arrested him and said, you can no longer teach those things.
46:15
You have to bow down and worship and offer incense to the gods because the gods of Rome
46:21
were the glue that held the empire together.
46:23
And if you refuse to do that, that was like being a traitor or a renegade to your country.
46:32
Religion and state were together then, they were the same thing.
46:36
And they said, they got him out and they said, we want you to stop doing this.
46:40
There's still the record of it that was written back then that you can read.
46:44
And he says, I will not recant my position because I am a Christian.
46:49
I've done nothing wrong.
46:50
They said, we can whip you.
46:52
He says, do what you will.
46:54
I'm a Christian.
46:55
They said, we can cut your head off.
46:57
And he says, you can do that too.
46:59
He said, because I'm not going to change.
47:01
So they did whip him and they cut his head off, which is how he got his last name, Justin Martyr.
47:07
Then they gathered together all of his students and there's still, you can see the names of them.
47:12
I don't know them by heart, but there's about 12 students that they brought in and they
47:16
gave them the same ultimatum and they did the same thing.
47:19
And they were also whipped and beaten and had their heads cut off.
47:22
This is why the church survived because these people believed it enough to die for it.
47:28
And the Romans didn't have anything to believe that much.
47:32
They knew their gods were mythical.
47:34
They didn't have a foundation for their society.
47:37
They didn't have a foundation for their own lives.
47:39
And these Christians had something they didn't have.
47:42
What did they have that we don't have?
47:44
So that's how he died.
47:46
Irenaeus, we don't know if he died as a martyr or not, but his bones were in Lyon in France.
47:51
And this tells you a little bit too, when the Calvinists came after the Martin Luther,
47:57
then Calvin came along with his reform, they went into the church of St. Irenaeus and they
48:04
took all of his bones out of the casket.
48:06
They kicked through them into the river and they kicked his skull around like a football.
48:10
So there's very few relics of Irenaeus left, but that's what the Calvinists did with the
48:16
remains of St. Irenaeus of Lyon.
48:19
Polycarp, this is the last of the five.
48:22
Polycarp was 86 years old and he was what they called the destroyer of our gods because
48:29
he was so powerful in his preaching and had such an influence on the whole Western side
48:34
of Turkey, if today was Asia minor, they called him the destroyer of our gods.
48:40
And they brought him in front of the governor in the big arena and they told him to denounce
48:46
his Christ.
48:47
And he said, 80 and six years have I served him and he has done me no harm.
48:53
How can I deny my Lord now?
48:55
They said, think of your age, you're an old man, just deny him.
48:59
It's not that big of a deal.
49:01
I will not deny him.
49:03
I am a Christian, do to me what you will.
49:06
They burned him at the stake, but the flames, it said enveloped him, but went like a sail
49:12
around him and did not burn him.
49:15
All of the men who started the fire had to step back 10 or 20 feet because the flames
49:19
were so hot.
49:20
But even they said, he said, you don't have to tie me up.
49:23
I'm not going anywhere.
49:25
Just put me there on the fire.
49:26
I'm not going anywhere.
49:28
And so they didn't tie him up.
49:29
He just stood there and we still have the prayer that he prayed because there's an eyewitness
49:34
account of this martyrdom.
49:37
And in my movie, I recreated with technology, I'm in a fire and the fire is burning me.
49:43
And while it is, I'm raising my hands up and I'm quoting his prayer by verbatim that he
49:48
prayed to God while he's burning, but he didn't burn.
49:52
And then they ended up, it says when the fire went down enough where it was, they could
49:57
approach because it had been too hot.
49:59
They stabbed him with a knife and that's how they killed him.
50:03
Steve, we have to end there because we've run out of time.
50:08
Thank you for a fascinating conversation.
50:10
God bless you.
50:11
Very good work.
50:12
And I look forward to next time.
50:14
Thank you.
50:15
I'm Desert Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of the Catholic Current.
50:18
Join us tomorrow for Let's Talk About This.
50:20
We walk through a complex issue together.
50:23
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audios
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Take us to your family and friends.
50:31
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50:33
With the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may mighty God bless you, Father,
50:36
Son, and Holy Spirit.
50:38
Go in peace and please do pray for me for I am a sinner.